Wow, was this car really worth this??

[chr2002ca]

In the past, on Ebay, you could at least see the actual Ebay account names of the people bidding on public auctions by clicking on the 'Current Bids' link for that auction. You could then click on the bidders' account names and see their bidding history, feedback, etc, and that helped a lot in determining the validity of the other bids in the auction. You could even send a private message to another bidder in the auction. A seller could only hide bidder names in their auction if they specifically set the auction to 'private', and when they did that, it was a possible sign something fishy might be going on. However, now, all auctions are private. I believe they did this for privacy reasons which is understandable, but it really makes it easier for a seller to use other accounts or have his friends bid up an auction and nobody could ever tell. There have been times when I have wanted to tell a bidder on an auction that the car they just bid $8K for is actually listed on CraigsList by the same seller for $6K, just as a way to possibly save that poor sap some money, but you can't do that anymore. So there's been some functionality and important information lost due to privacy. You just have to be honest with yourself and what you're willing to pay and not care what other people are bidding because you don't know where those other bids are coming from. Bid what you think is an accurate price and if you don't win then it just wasn't meant to be. You never know, the auction might be relisted, or the seller may come back to you with a 'second chance' opportunity or something.